Rant About Mods

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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There’s no suggestion in this post, I’m not asking for or expecting any changes. Just an “old-man” gamer shaking his fist at the clouds.

In my last run, one of our team members told everyone to hold position and get ready to fight the twins. “Huh, he must of heard some spawn cue that I missed.” Curious, I asked him about it after the fight.

“Oh, that’s just my spawn mod. It messages me when specials and bosses spawn, and shows me how many are currently active.”

Just…blithely admitting to cheating like it was nothing. And this isn’t at all uncommon either. I’ve had suggestions for cheats, from players in-game, that do the following; Show you the radius of explosive barrels, play an alert when crushers are attacking you from behind, display health-bars above enemies, make smoke effects transparent, display the remaining health of your shield domes, display in public chat each players total damage (not a cheat, but seriously f*ck that nonsense)

Whatever happened to game integrity? Why is cheating an officially sanctioned part of Darktide? This is some serious participation-trophy-ass-nonsense. Players run into difficulty in this game, and instead of practicing and getting better, they just mod their way to success.

“Back in my day-grumble-grumble-grumble”

Imagine playing Dungeons and Dragons, and one day one of your player’s shows up with a new rule-book that he wrote himself. It’s full of clearly over-powered classes and abilities.

“Wuhhhhhh whats the matter, its a team-game, I’m just helping us win! Look, you can use them too so it’s fine!” He squeals from between his dorito-dust encrusted lips.

Nobody would let that sh*t fly. You either adhere to the rules, or you don’t play. Because without clearly defined boundaries and an impartial DM, the game has no meaning.

Alright, rant over. I know this is just how it is, and normally I simply ignore it while feeling smugly superior I’m clearing havoc 40 with nothing but my own two RSI-riddled-meat-paws, but sometimes you just need to vent.

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Although whether a mod is considered “gray” or “black” often comes down to personal judgment, things like a health bar that is always visible and effectively lets you track enemy positions under any circumstances should clearly be banned, since that’s essentially a cheat. An open modding environment should be welcomed, but at the very least, before a mod is fully released to the public, it should be reviewed by a trusted community (for example, Fatshark-approved testers), and only those that pass should be allowed to go public. If that had been the case, we wouldn’t be in this situation where, as long as it doesn’t technically violate Fatshark’s policies, anything goes—even outright cheats.

The cheat mod I mentioned earlier is still freely available on Nexus despite being reported, and in the region where I play, a certain country has a large number of players who hold different values from the rest of the world. They casually share cheat mods within their own communities, and even use things like light-spam mods without batting an eye.

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That appears to be by design. By leaving the boundaries undefined, ultimately the meaning is whatever the individual players give it. It’s a coop game, but each player defines their own experience (and that can impact others indirectly).

Darktide is effectively Warhammer-land online, where people come to e-cosplay and ride the Archivum Sychorax and Hab Dreyko rides. If you want a specific experience, you need to seek others looking for the same. If you’re just slapping “quickplay”, you’re going to get whatever other randos are in line and have to deal with what they’re into, same way showing up at Disneyland on your own and hopping onto rides by yourself means you’ll get stuck on the ride next to whoever else stood in line with you and their potential weirdness.

Some people want the vanilla out-of-the box experience, some people want ez-mode even on hard-mode, some people just vibe to all the tactical visual input stuff because that’s what makes their brain tick, some people want to squeeze out every possible bit of performance, some people just want a slightly different experience to whatever comes in the box, and some people just can’t deal with clicking repeatedly over and over. The game accommodates all of that to some extent, if you don’t want to deal with elements of that, it’s best to curate a consistent playgroup into the same thing. I don’t ever play this game without at least one other person I know from a handful of social groups, the game is infinitely less stressful when you’re playing with at least some familiar faces.

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Fatshark pulls a Bethesda and just lets modders fill in the many holes the game. Basic stuff like Numeric UI and boss health bars.

All these nonsense mods are a consequence of that, and stuff like spawn mod and crusher overhead alert (lol) come into play because people see how inconsistent the game can be and want to make it less frustrating. I’m not sure if it was a mod or a macro, but craziest thing I’ve seen in game was a melee scriers psyker with Blaze sword animation canceling the L1 stab and mowing through the map on high havoc even.

I personally think A LOT of mods people use is just useless clutter and I cannot think of a reason why they use most of it.

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As long as the in-game systems that are supposed to let players know important information are busted, I see no problem with a lot of quality-of-life mods. They’re literally there fixing the issues the game has with notifications.

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Of the ones listed this is one I use.

By considering it a cheat you admit being blinded by smoke grenades is a handicap. I’m not going to suffer through it just because someone is trying to get their smoke grenade penance done.

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In the past I was really against some mods like Healthbars, I gave up on caring and I just smirk when people can mark stimms and loot through the walls or when they remove all the visual effects for more clarity. If you actually have a shred of self-awareness, it’s pretty clear as day half of these mods are cheats, in every other game you’d get banned for using even stuff that slightly brightens your screen, let alone remove visual effects so that you have easier time tracking enemies. Even some of the content creators use multiple of these mods, so…

At this point, who cares, just take the win if you’ve had an easier time playing with heavily-modded player and move on to the next game. I’ve had Ogryn in Havoc who has a macro for optimized pickaxe combo, but I didn’t even bother commenting on it (he used the same two attacks on every enemy and the animation was very snappy for it to be real button presses). The funny thing is, it still took us 2 tries to finish the map, even with a “mod” like that.

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I’m in the old man camp too and have had my gameplay experience mired by people with mods. I just want to know we’re all playing the same game. But we’re not.

Then you get loads of people on here complaining the game is too easy and unbalanced…whilst using loads of gameplay mods!!! Then they disingenuously call them QOL mods in a daring attempt of self deception. The only mods that are QOL are ones that are only active in the hub or menu system. Anything affecting gameplay in a mission is NOT QOL.

How can a game be balanced when almost half the players are using cheat codes? It’s why I ask people to disable mods when considering feedback but we all know they don’t. People are addicted to glittery training wheels.

I think there should be a modded realm via sefoni where you can play with mods there and the normal mission board blocks them. Sefonis realm wouldn’t give any rewards either - just a sandbox missionboard for mods.

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It’s funny when you say this, because many of the mods were user to cover flaws about the game

Info mods were created mostly because the game… literally lacks info that should be given to you

Boss & Special sound queues missing (especially spawning) due to all the garbage the director sends, Twins literally only doing the small shield generation sound on spawn, Barrels doing 0 sounds at all when primed, Plasma Gunners on release practically giving 0 audio/visual queue

Fatshark should fix all issues before making mods not allowed unless Sanctioned like VT2 does right now

More of “Imagine playing Dungeons and Dragons, and one day one for players brings up a new dice because the old one broken, scratched and with an unbalanced weight around the sides”

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But at least all our experience is the exact same so we will end up with the same gripes and our voice will get louder for FS to fix things.

Having half the player base using ‘backstreet fixes’ means that half the player base will be silent as they’ll have forgotten the vanilla experience.

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Lots of games have bugs and balance issues, doesn’t mean every game and every playerbase just tolerates borderline cheats.

Everyone should be on the same page in a multiplayer environment.

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Please re-read your message

”I know this thing about the game is bad and bugged, but a lot of players would REALLY hate if you bypassed that! Everyone should suffer because it’s multiplayer”

No, fix the issues first, THEN restrict mods

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“We need players to have a bad experience so Fatshark is pressured more into fixing them”

This is not a good thing to say btw

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But it’s ok to force a different type of bad experience on other players by using mods? I’d say that’s actually a pretty bad thing to say.

Especially when using the vanilla game is what all console users are bound to for starters. So that’s quite a chunk of players who can only play vanilla.

Yes FS should fix bugs but why do they need to if the vocal forum users are modded up to their eyeballs?

Let’s have a modded realm so modders can play together and vanilla folk can play together.

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You’re not forcing anything onto anyone. It is everyone’s moral duty, modded or not, to point out the flaws of the game and push the devs into fixing it

The Console issue is exactly WHY Fatshark has to fix their stuff up, however players can’t really be forced to have a bad experience just to pressure them into making Console better, it’s as simple as that

”why do they need to do it if…” What, somehow forum users are the most important people to please now?

Modded realm would be awesome, but before that fix the game first so that vanilla can be left into an actual presentable state for long-time players

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Modded realm is not that good, since it separates the playerbase and the game already struggles with finding enough people for 3 gamemodes. I use some of the mods like Custom UI, True Level, inspect loadout from party finder, scoreboard, which means that even players with minimal mods will be forced to play a modded realm. I mean, I play vanilla from time to time anyway when I don’t care to reinstall mods, but sometimes I also play with mods

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It’s fine only Havoc 40 / Solo players would play modded anyways, so it’s not like it’s being split by anything at all

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People outside of Havoc often use mods too, even funny chat wheel mods that spam “meow for the Emperor”. They’d have to play modded realm too

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Im using mods (healthbars, clear smoke, numeric ui, uptime, scoreboard).

My friends using mods.

And what can i say: not matter how many mods u use. Without skill its all pointless.

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Yes skill is still needed, but no matter how small advantage is, it’s still an advantage.

Healthbar mods lets you know the exact breakpoint of every enemy, it highlights enemies in darkness, fog, gas and behind the cover. In Havoc this mod is very good for better target priority.

People get jaded playing with stuff like that and then come participate in balance discussions of the game.

“No, smoke grenades are actually god tier. Of course I use mod that clears the smoke effect, what do you mean?”

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